The Avalanche have begun to position themselves for a Cup run
Mar 16, 2022, 6:48 AM
After their second consecutive 3-0 shutout on Tuesday, the Colorado Avalanche looked like a team hungry for redemption, and more than capable of getting it. After blanking the Kings in Los Angeles Tuesday night — after doing the same to the Calgary Flames in Denver on Sunday — the Avs took care of the top two teams in the Pacific Division and tightened their stranglehold on the Western Conference’s top playoff seed.
Now armed with a 12-point lead in the West, the 43-13-5 Avalanche’s biggest opponent might be health. Captain and leading goal-scorer Gabriel Landeskog will miss time following a surgical procedure on his knee, defenseman Samuel Girard is dealing with a back injury and 20-year-old blue-chip blueliner Bowen Byram is still dealing with post-concussion symptoms.
General manager Joe Sakic realizes the opportunity that now sits in front of his team; one that they squandered in a disheartening playoff series loss to the Vegas Golden Knights after finishing with the NHL’s best record last season. More confident goaltending by offseason addition Darcy Kuemper — the author of the last two shutouts — has eliminated the need to look for an upgrade in the net prior to Monday’s trade deadline.
“He’s playing with a ton of confidence, and it’s pouring over to the rest of our team,” coach Jared Bednar said after Tuesday’s win.
Sakic hasn’t been complacent, however. Defenseman Josh Manson made his Avalanche debut on Tuesday after being acquired by Colorado from Anaheim two days prior, in exchange for talented (but unsigned) defensive prospect Drew Helleson and a 2023 second-round draft pick. The 6-foot-3, 225-pound Manson fit in splendidly, doling out 10 hits on 26 shifts without drawing a penalty, and giving the Avs a physical, stay-at-home defender that’s perfectly happy to do the dirty work.
“I think they have so much talent here that really all I need to do is just come in and fly under the radar and help keep pushing the team in the right direction,” Manson said prior to Tuesday’s game. “Doing the little things that I do that a lot of times just go unnoticed; I think that’s kind of the best way to describe it — if I’m not being noticed, then it’s probably a good thing.”
The Avalanche made another trade prior to Tuesday’s game, sending forward Tyson Jost to the Minnesota Wild for Nico Sturm, a player two years older than Jost with a remarkably similar stat line while playing the same position. Sturm, however, is four inches taller and nearly 25 pounds heavier than the Avs’ 2016 first-round selection and immediately becomes one of the Avalanche’s best face-off options; shoring up one of Colorado’s few weaknesses, and one of Jost’s in particular.
Sakic’s tweaking the roster with those moves, but it feels as if there’s one more to come — and it might be a big one. The Avalanche have been linked to the Philadelphia Flyers’ Claude Giroux for over a month now, and while they’re the likely favorites to land him, the injuries to Girard and Landeskog may allow Sakic to aim even higher. Girard appears likely to return by the playoffs, and Bednar indicated after Tuesday’s win that Landeskog is “confident that he’ll be back in time for the playoffs, if not sooner.”
That said, the Avalanche could borrow a tactic that the Tampa Bay Lightning used en route to their Stanley Cup championship last season. Due to a quirk in the NHL’s rules, a player placed on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) sees his salary cap hit virtually disappear until he returns in the regular season, allowing teams to acquire needed reinforcements. However, after the regular season ends — like, say, immediately prior to Game One of the postseason — that player can be reactivated with fewer salary cap ramifications.
The Lightning were generally assumed to be hiding injured star forward Nikita Kucherov that way at this time last year; Kucherov just so happened to be game-ready for the postseason, and the overloaded squad cruised to their second straight championship. Were the Avalanche to place Landeskog or Girard, or both, on LTIR, Sakic could conceivably add even more expensive talent in a trade without violating the league salary-cap rules. Presumably, the league will close this loophole in the next collective bargaining agreement, but for now? Rules are rules.
Colorado is unquestionably the league’s best club; deep and talented, with a renewed intensity drawn from the pain of last season’s playoff failure. They’ve cut a swath through the NHL for the vast majority of the season. The bill will eventually come due, though.
Forwards Nazem Kadri (the team leader with 73 points), Andre Burakovsky (45 points) and Valeri Nichushkin (33 points, including a goal, an assist and the first star award on Tuesday) will be unrestricted free agents after the season, and all in line for significant raises. Goaltender Kuemper is, too. They won’t all be back next fall, making this trade deadline one of the more important ones for the Avalanche in years.
The Avalanche’s profoundly talented core of Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar, Devon Toews, Landeskog and Girard assures that the team will be playoff contenders for years to come — but they may never have a better backup band than the one they have today. Few people realize that more than Sakic, which is why his aggressive approach to the league’s trade season will only build until Monday’s deadline ends among a flurry of deals that should see the Avalanche evolve into a team that shouldn’t accept anything less than a Western Conference crown and a berth in the Stanley Cup Finals this spring.
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